Engaging the Pandemic
How one medical anthropologist is boosting our capacity to understand and contend with COVID-19. In late February 2020, I traveled back to the United States from India and…
Author: Chelsea Horton
A Game Changer for Graduate Schools and Anthropology
Recent articles in the Chronicle of Higher Education and the Scientist both highlight the fact that graduate students are disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 crisis. Graduate students at…
CFP: VOTE
Image description: Blue and red hands reach toward a white ballot box. Each hand holds a small square of paper with an x marked on it. iStock To…
Accessibility at the AAA Meeting
Two anthropologists reflect on their experiences and ask what it will take to make our discipline and our Annual Meeting more accessible. Why should you care about accessibility?…
What’s in a Mask?
In early March 2020, groups of professional tailors and hobbyists formed to make high quality facsimiles of surgical masks to remedy a shortfall in personal protective equipment (PPE)…
Ten Things about Collaborating for Climate Solutions
Heather Lazrus is an environmental anthropologist who studies perceptions of and responses to extreme weather in the context of a changing climate. Image description: An illustrated portrait of…
The Social Lives of Climate Reports
IPCC reports are hailed as objective, empirical evidence. But the social life of their production and circulation has much to do with conflicting politics, values, and choices. In…
Unsustainable City
In New York, the sustainable city is being built on its own undoing. In 2014, residents of Staten Island’s Elm Park neighborhood found their cars covered in dust.…
Scientists Predict the Future for Antarctic Ice
The Antarctic ice sheets are losing mass at an accelerating rate. How do scientists explain and engage with this increasingly urgent climate crisis? Antarctic ice looms. Literally. Much…
Forensic Anthropology in a Changing Climate
In 2018, a wildfire swept through Northern California. Forensic anthropologists were called in to identify skeletal remains in a devastated recovery scene. In a smoke-filled parking lot, our…
My Petrochemical Love
For women of color on Louisiana’s Gulf Coast, everyday environmental and climate activism is entangled with intimate lives. It is April, and it is hot and humid in…
The Long View of Climate Change and Human Health
The deterministic view that climate change invariably causes migration, competition, violence, and collapse is overly simplistic. Bioarchaeology shows us that human responses are far more complex and …
After Oil
To navigate the growing storms of climate change, St. Croix is doubling down on the fiscal promise of oil. Residents demand otherwise. St. Croix stands at a climate…
Death of a Glacier
In 2014, the first of Iceland’s named glaciers suffered death by human-made climate change. Two anthropologists decided to mark its passing. Sometime around the year 2000, no one…
The Twin Threat Facing Indigenous Peoples
For the Indigenous peoples of the Amazon, COVID-19 is a radical threat, one which strikes at their worldview and mirrors the violence of predatory invaders. In quarantine in…
The Use of Money to Maintain Connection (and Toilet Paper)
When I received an email containing one of the first Covid-19 payment memes—“How do you wish to pay?”, with an image of Visa, MasterCard, and a roll of…
How Do You Do “Social”?
We invite you to share your strategies for feeling connected and balancing home and work responsibilities in these social distancing times. Image description: A photo of someone’s desk…
Ten Things You Don’t Know About Me
Image Description: Drawing of a blonde woman in a light green shirt with an orangutan peering over her shoulder. Charlotte Hollands I was an actor before I became…
Stars—They Talk Just Like Us!
How an Instagram-based gossip franchise allows celebrities to manage the authenticity of their public personae. They go to the market! They pump gas! They explore the park! One…
“We Use Our Mouths to Trade”
At Ghana’s Kumasi Central Market gossip is more than idle talk. It helps traders mitigate economic risk and boost professional reputations. In the yam yard, wholesale traders bargain…
Tea Fit for a Queen
Tea sipping has a distinctly queer pedigree. To serve tea properly, one must be skilled in the art of verbal delivery. During last summer’s Women’s World Cup, Alex…
Gossip—A Thing Humans Do
Gossip and rumor are important informal modes of communication, influencing public opinion and individual actions. But, the distinction between information and falsehood can be difficult to see. Is…
Gossip in the Aid Industry
For international aid workers, gossip is a means of navigating a complex industry and acquiring essential information. All we have to do now Is take these lies and…
Threats to Destroy Cultural Heritage Harm Us All
Trump’s Twitter intimidation may have been politically expedient bluster. But, it threatened our collective cultural legacy, regional stability, and scientific inquiry. When United States President D…